Significant advances have been made in recent years in providing displays of a video information on a video monitor or screen. For example, graphics information has been displayed on a video monitor with enhanced resolution and fidelity as a result of significant advances in the processing of the digital information representing such colors and in the conversion of such digital information into an analog form. Such information has often been processed in digital form and thereafter converted to analog form in a personal computer or work station. In recent years, video information has been simultaneously displayed with the graphics information in such personal computers and work stations. For example, video information has been displayed in a window on the face of the video monitor of the personal computer or work station while graphics information has been displayed on the remainder of the monitor face.
In recent years there have also been significant strides in using miniaturized computers such as personal computers and work stations in processing information involving multimedia applications. These multimedia applications may take many different forms. For example, they may involve graphics, television, facsimile and/or audio. In spite of these advances, a suitable system does not exist which is sufficiently flexible to process different types of information efficiently, inexpensively and reliably. For example, the systems now in use are not capable of switching efficiently, inexpensively and reliably between different types of presentations such as graphics, video and audio. This has been particularly true when information from more than one type of media (e.g. graphics, video, television and audio) is to be presented simultaneously. This has limited the utility of the systems now in use. Such limitations exist now in multimedia equipment even though considerable amounts of money have been expended, and considerable effort has been devoted, through the years, and particularly in recent years, to develop a satisfactory multimedia system.